Kellan Baker

Senior Fellow

Kellan Baker is a Senior Fellow with the LGBT Research and Communications Project at American Progress. His work includes improving data collection about LGBT populations, working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on a range of LGBT health policy priorities, and advancing LGBT issues internationally.

Baker is a founding steering committee member of Out2Enroll, a nationwide initiative that conducts community education and trains enrollment assisters to help connect LGBT people and their families with their new coverage options under the Affordable Care Act. He also directs the LGBT State Exchanges Project, which partners with LGBT and consumer health advocates in numerous states to ensure that the benefits of the Affordable Care Act reach LGBT communities. The project focuses on the operation of the health insurance marketplaces, with a particular emphasis on nondiscrimination and other insurance market reforms, consumer engagement, data collection, and closing the coverage gap through Medicaid expansion in every state.

Baker is a member of the Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and is a frequent presenter on LGBT health issues at venues that include the White House, Johns Hopkins University, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office. He is also an affiliated faculty member for LGBT health policy at the Center for Population Research in LGBT Health at the Fenway Institute and has consulted on LGBT health and health disparities with The Joint Commission and the Open Society Foundations, among others. Baker holds a B.A. with high honors from Swarthmore College, as well as an M.P.H. in global public health policy and an M.A. in international development from George Washington University.

Baker is currently a doctoral candidate in health services research and policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he is the department’s centennial scholar. His research interests include policy approaches to addressing health disparities, the design and financing of safety net health care services, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.